The Shadows Call
by Reanimator
Summary: The fixed up version of my second Angela fic. I fixed the paragraphs, so now there's more than one.


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A/N: When I wrote 'Coming Home', my other fic about Angela, I had a reviewer who thought a sequel was a good idea. This isn't a sequel, but a new fic altogether. Hope you like this one, Kenshul!

You know, Fate can be an awful thing. I ran away from home years ago, and now here I was returning to a place that held very few happy memories for me. But it seemed that Silent Hill was calling me, calling me back. No, that's not right. It was more like the town was ordering me home, calling, commanding, me in my dreams. So I packed up all my stuff, not that I had much, and all of a sudden a desire to see my mama, I mean mother, come over me. So I traveled home, going mostly at night to avoid unwanted attention, spending what little money I had on food and sleeping outside, sometimes in the rain. When I finally got to Silent Hill, I decided to go to the churchyard and see my father and my poor brother. I couldn't find them! I mean, okay, maybe my mama had my brother cremated but my father should have been there! Mama would have kept my brother's ashes, but not 'his'! But then again, maybe she would have.

Picture this, me, Angela, sitting in a cold foggy churchyard looking for two members of my family that didn't seem to be anywhere, when this guy comes down the trail and scares the Hell out of me! He said his name was James, and that he was looking for someone. When I told him that there was something 'wrong' with the town, he said he didn't really care if it was dangerous or not, and he went off. I wonder if the town called him, too. I waited until I thought he would be nearly at then end of the trail before I headed into town myself. I'm not sure I want to meet him again. Mind you, I think that if I was given the chance, I would never have come him, but something tells me that now I'm here, I can't leave. Silent Hill was deserted. I didn't see anyone; I didn't even see any pets or strays. I didn't even hear any birds. I kept thinking I could hear my father, whispering to me like he used to before he….. Well, never mind. Every shadow looked like him, leaning over me, and once, I thought I felt his breath on the back of my neck, hot and sour. That was it. I took off, running as fast as I could, while that shadow grew larger, closer and more threatening.

I finally reached the apartment building where my mama lived, and I ran inside. It was almost as bad. All the lights were broken and the shadows were huge, towering above me with unimaginable malice. I couldn't run anymore, I had a stitch in my side from my last shadow marathon. So I just walked towards mama's apartment, expecting that at any moment my shadow father would grab me and pull me back into the darkness. When I got to mamas, the door was unlocked. Weird. She never, ever left the door unlocked, even when we were all at home. She always used to say that people who left their doors unlocked were just inviting burglaries and home invasions, and that she wasn't going to give any thug that chance. When I went in, the whole place was empty, no signs of life, no sign that anyone had lived there for a long time, and no mama. I looked everywhere, and she wasn't there. My mama wasn't anywhere. Could she have died while I was away? I never sent them one of those address cards when I moved into that cockroach hotel that I lived at after I ran away. And I never used my real name, so no one would have been able to get in touch with me. Where's my mama?!? When I got to her room and found it mostly empty, I just sat down on the floor and cried. I went looking through my pockets for a tissue and all I found was a family photo. Mama and me on one side and my father on the other. I just felt so much hate for him at that moment, if he hadn't done what he did, I would never have done what I did, and I would have still been with my mama. But you know what? After I'd ripped that damn picture in two, I felt like I'd ripped my heart and soul to pieces. There was this great emptiness, this loneliness, inside of me and when I saw that knife, just sitting on the dresser, the only thought I had was 'why not?'.

I was lying on the floor wondering if it would hurt, when that James guy walked in and started to talk me out of it. I asked him if he had found who he was looking for, and he told me he hadn't and that it was his wife he was searching for - and that she had died three years ago! My God! What a weirdo! Why is he looking for a dead person? At least when I was first looking for mama I thought she was still alive! I gave James the knife and just got the Hell out of there! I mean, if he's looking for a dead person, he's got to be somewhat unhinged, right? That's when I remembered that my mama used to clean at the Lakeside Hotel and I decided to head over there and see if maybe she was at work. Hey, I could always hope, right? Anyway. I started walking up Nathan Avenue, and I saw this…. Well I dunno, it was like a doorway in the ground, and it seemed to be calling to me somehow and I felt drawn to it, like something was telling me to go down the stairs and I felt like I had to go down, that I couldn't refuse that voice. I had only gone down the first dozen steps when the doorway above me slammed shut. I ran back up the stairs only to find that the door was locked, and I had no choice but to go back down, down in the dark.

It was like that nightmare I used to have when I was a little girl, and I would be walking around in a dark place, like a cellar, when I would sense something in there with me, and I would be trying to look everywhere at once and then The Thing would pounce on me, and I would wake everybody else in the apartment with my screams. Thank God nothing even _breathed_ in this place or I would probably have just dropped dead from fright. After a while, I began to notice that it was getting lighter, the darkness fading only reluctantly, as if it were so used to ruling, that it was vainly fighting the light, like an aged king who would not give up his crown without a bitter battle. I finally found myself in this labyrinth type place, and after a while I began to notice that I was going around in circles, so I entered a deserted room. At least I thought it was deserted. My father was there, there in that room. But he's dead! I, I, kill….. No actually I'm not going to go there. He was coming toward me, like he used to on those dark nights when I was small. I thought that this was going to be my end, when James walked in and shot my father. He shot my Daddy! I remember just getting really angry and, picking up a TV that was sitting on a table, I smashed it over the head of the body. As for James, well I should have figured out that he's only after one thing. Jerk! And they're all the damned same, they're all just like my daddy! They're all pigs! All the damn same!

Okay, I think I'm calm, now. Anyway, after I got the Hell away from James, I kinda just wandered around in this funhouse of a place for a while, with the shadows closing in on me like they did when I first entered this cursed town. When I finally got back outside I couldn't see very much because of the fog, except for a light shining way off in the distance. I almost thought twice about following it but then I figured I had nothing to lose. I must have walked for hours and the light never seemed to get any closer. I was just at the point where I figured I was going to drop from exhaustion when I saw where the light was coming from. The Lakeside Hotel! It was kinda hard to believe that I had walked all the way around the lake, but I was tired and glad to find somewhere to go to get away from the shadows. When I walked through the front door and heard it shut behind me, I noticed that the walls were flickering, like they were on fire or something. I could hear mama's voice inside my head, telling me what a bad girl I was, and the sad thing is, she's right. I should have been able to find my father in the graveyard, because I put him there. Stabbed him, for all the bad things he ever did to me. The police never even suspected me, but mama knew. That thing in that room wasn't my father, anymore than the shadows. After walking around the hotel for a while, I found a staircase that seemed to go up into nothing, and was wreathed in flame. There were some odd pictures on the walls. I was contemplating one of them, when James walked in. I was right all along. He can't love me, take care of me. I asked him to give me back the knife but he refused. Probably wants to use it himself! He passed comment that it was " Hot as Hell in here", and I told him that, for me it's always like this. Then I turned my back on him and walked into the fire. I hope that, at the end, there are no more shadows.


End file.
